Unsteady Aerodynamic Models for Flight Control of Agile Micro Air Vehicles

Abstract

This project addresses the development of a hierarchy of models for unsteady aerodynamics, in a framework that is suitable for control design. The ultimate goal is to use these models for the design of flight controllers, for instance to accurately track a trajectory in the presence of large disturbances. Classical aerodynamic models by Theodorsen and Wagner were shown to be accurate in many cases, but break down at high angles of attack or for very rapid maneuvers. Methods were developed to perform balanced model reduction without the need for adjoint information, and for systems with periodic motions (such as vortex shedding). These were used to develop models of unsteady pitching and plunging maneuvers that are well-suited to control design techniques. The methods were developed for linearized models (small-amplitude motions) but also perform well for large-amplitude maneuvers.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 13, 2010
Accession Number
ADA547432

Entities

People

  • Clarence W. Rowley

Organizations

  • Princeton University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Sensors
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aerodynamics
  • Aircrafts
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics
  • Computational Science
  • Flow
  • Fluid Dynamics
  • Fluid Flow
  • Fluid Mechanics
  • High Angles
  • Linear Systems
  • Multiple Input Multiple Output
  • Navier Stokes Equations
  • Three Dimensional
  • Two Dimensional
  • Unsteady Aerodynamics
  • Unsteady Flow
  • Vortex Shedding

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Aerodynamics/Aeronautics.
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
  • Control Systems Engineering.